The End of Men? 15 Reasons Males Face Extinction

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The End of Men? 15 Reasons Males Are Facing Extinction

By Jed Diamond, Ph.D.

Contact: [email protected] Web: www.MenAlive.com

“It was a great mistake my being born a man. I would have been much more successful as a sea gull or a fish. As it is, I will always be a stranger who never feels at home, who does not really want and is not really wanted, who can never belong, who must always be a little in love with death.”

--Eugene O-Neill, Long Day’s Journey into Night

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Men An Endangered Species?

#1 Women Don’t Need Us

The idea that men are in decline and may face extinction would have seemed ludicrous even a

few years ago. Now more and more people are taking it seriously. The prestigious British

Journal of Medicine published an editorial written by Siegfried Meryn, M.D. titled “The future

of men and their health: Are men in danger of extinction?”

“Although there is still a long way to go in most societies around the world, it is clear that

women can perform (and on most occasions outperform) pretty much all the tasks traditionally

reserved for men,” says Dr. Meryn in his editorial. “In most of the developed world women are

starting to outnumber men in medical schools and making rapid gains in terms of equality in

compensation and opportunities in the workforce. “With the advent of sperm banks, in vitro

fertilization, sex sorting techniques, sperm independent fertilization of eggs with somatic cells,

human cloning, and same sex marriages, it is also reasonable to wonder about the future role of

men in society.”

According to Bryan Sykes, professor of genetics at Oxford University and author of Adam’s

Curse: A Future Without Men, “It is no secret that, underneath it all, men are basically

genetically modified women. In this respect, our evolution can be regarded as a gigantic and

long-running GM experiment. Adam is as much cursed as curing. Far from being vigorous and

robust, this ultimate genetic symbol of male machismo, the Y chromosome, is decaying at such

as alarming rather that, for humans, at least, the GM experiment will soon be over. Like many

species before us who have lost their males, we run the real risk of extinction.”

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#2 Males Are Fragile

From the moment of conception males are more fragile and vulnerable than females. Male

fetuses die more often than female. So do male newborns. So do male infants. So do male

adolescents. So do male adults. So do old men.

Part of the explanation is the biology of the male fetus, which is little understood and not

widely known. At conception there are more male than female embryos. This may be because

the spermatozoa carrying the Y chromosome swim faster than those carrying X. The advantage

is, however, immediately challenged. External maternal stress around the time of conception is

associated with a reduction in the male to female sex ratio, suggesting that the male embryo is

more vulnerable than the female.

The male fetus is at greater risk of death or damage from almost all the obstetric catastrophes

that can happen before birth. Perinatal brain damage, cerebral palsy, congenital deformities of the

genitalia and limbs, premature birth, and stillbirth are commoner in boys, and by the time a boy is

born he is on average developmentally some weeks behind his sister. A newborn girl is the

physiological equivalent of a 4 to 6 week old boy.


#3 Males Pay a Price for the Glory of Manhood

William S. Pollack, in his book Real Boys: Rescuing Our Sons From the Myths of Boyhood,

says that boys "lose their voice, a whole half of their emotional selves, beginning at age 4 or 5.

Their vulnerable, sad feelings and sense of need are suppressed or shamed out of them," he says

-- by their peers, parents, the great wide televised fist in their face. He adds: "If you keep

hammering it into a kid that he has to look tough and stop being a crybaby and a mama's boy,

the boy will start creating a mask of bravado."

In his book, The Hazards of Being Male: Surviving the Myth of Masculine Privilege,

psychologist Herb Goldberg summarizes what many have come to believe about men. “The

American an endangered species? he asks. “Absolutely! The male has paid a heavy price for his

masculine ‘privilege’ and power. He is out of touch with his emotions and his body. He is

playing by the rules of the male game plan and with lemming-like purpose he is destroying

himself—emotionally, psychologically and physically.”

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#4 Boys Fall Behind in School

“Something dramatic happens to girls in early adolescence,” said Mary Pipher, author of

Reviving Ophelia. “Just as planes and ships disappear mysteriously into the Bermuda Triangle,

so do the selves of girls go down in droves. They crash and burn.” However, we may be

missing an even more at-risk group—boys.

Data from the U.S. Department of Education and from several recent university studies show

that boys are falling behind in their education. Girls get better grades. They have higher

educational aspirations. They follow a more rigorous academic program and participate more in

the prestigious Advanced Placement (AP) program.

It should not surprise us then that girls read more books. They outperform males on tests of

artistic and musical ability. More girls than boys study abroad. Conversely, more boys than

girls are suspended from school. More are held back and more drop out. Boys are three times as

likely as girls to be enrolled in special education programs and four times as likely to be

diagnosed with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). More boys than girls are

involved in crime, alcohol, and drugs.

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#5 Males Lack Important Social Skills

Surprisingly, it was John D. Rockefeller who said, “The ability to deal with people is as

purchasable a commodity as sugar or coffee. And I pay more for that ability than for any other

under the sun.”

Neuroscientists currently believe that interpersonal sensitivity, a conglomerate of aptitudes

they call “executive social skills” or “social cognition,” resides in the prefrontal cortex, the area

of the brain behind the brow. Those with a well-functioning prefrontal cortex are aware of the

feelings of others, pick up on emotional expressions and body language, and are adept at

maintaining good social relationships with friends, family and co-workers.

Neuroscientist David Skuse believes that women are more likely than men to acquire the

genetic endowment for developing these vital social skills. The reason, he believes, is that there

is a specific gene or cluster of genes on the X chromosome that influences the formation of the

prefrontal cortex. He found that this gene or gene cluster is silenced in 100% of men but active

in about 50% of women. Hence about half of all women and no men have the brain architecture

to excel at perceiving the nuances of social interplay. This doesn’t mean that the other 50% of

women and all us men can’t learn these skills. It just means we have to work harder at it.

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#6 Being Male is Seen As Bad

Some feminists believe that being male is itself some kind of disease. Natalie Angier, an

influential voice in the public discourse on gender, wrote a piece in the New York Times called

“The Debilitating Malady Called Boyhood: Is There A Cure?” Can you imagine what kind of

an uproar would be created if the New York Times published an article titled “The Debilitating

Malady Called Girlhood: Is There A Cure?”

Well, if being a male is a disease, guess what the cure would be. Marilyn French is another

prominent American writer, celebrated for her novel The Women’s Room.” In a New York

Times interview she said, “I think men would be much happier if they behaved like women. I

think they would get much more out of life and would have much more easier selves if they were

like women.” Could anyone in the world today get away with suggesting that women would be

happier if they were like men, or that Muslims would be happier if they behaved more like Jews,

or Blacks happier if they behaved more like Whites?

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#7 Manhood is The Big Impossible

In his book Manhood in the Making, anthropologist David Gilmore reports on his cross-

cultural exploration of what it means to be a man. In cultures as diverse as hunter-gatherers,

horticultural and pastoral tribes, peasants, postindustrial civilizations from the east and west, he

found a similar vulnerability in all men. “Among most of the peoples that anthropologists are

familiar with,” says Gilmore, “true manhood is a precious and elusive status beyond mere

maleness.

Everywhere he looked at cultures Gilmore found that masculinity is a much more uncertain

concept than that of femininity. As author Norman Mailer recognized “Nobody was born a man;

you earned manhood provided you were good enough, bold enough.” He could be speaking

about the universal man, not just men in contemporary western cultures. In aboriginal North

America, among the Fox tribe for instance, manhood was seen as being “the Big Impossible,” an

exclusive status that only the nimble few can achieve.

Although women are pressured to live up to certain standards of femininity in all cultures and

are sanctioned and punished if they deviate, they are not threatened with the loss of their

womanhood to the degree that is true of men. “Rarely is their right to a gender identity

questioned in the same public, dramatic way that it is for men,” says Gilmore. “The very paucity

of linguistic labels for females echoing the epithets ‘effete,’ ‘unmanly’ ‘effeminate,’

‘emasculated,’ and so on, attest to this archetypical difference between sex judgments

worldwide.”


#8 Men Can’t Give Women What They Need the Most

In Africa male weaverbirds build nests and hang from them while singing their courting

song. Female weaverbirds inspect the nests of various males and stay to mate with the ones who

have the most desirable nests. Women, like weaverbirds prefer men with desirable nests.

Throughout the world and across cultures, women are drawn to men who have resources. “From

insects to primates, females prefer wealthy males,” say David P. Barash and Judith Eve Lipton,

authors of Making Sense of Sex: How Genes and Gender Influence our Relationships.i As an old

advertisement went, “Promise her anything, but give her Arpege.”

Increasingly men are finding it difficult to give women what they want. In her book Stiffed:

The Betrayal of the American Man, author Susan Faludi talked to Don Motta who could be

speaking for millions of men in this country who have been laid off, been downsized, or part of a

company that has gone under. “There is no way you can feel like a man. You can’t. It’s the fact

that I’m not capable of supporting my family…When you’ve been very successful in buying a

house, a car, and could pay for your daughter to go to college, though she didn’t want to, you

have a sense of success and people see it. I haven’t been able to support my daughter. I haven’t

been able to support my wife.”

“I’ll be very frank with you,” he said slowly, placing every word down as if each were an

increasingly heavy weight. “I. Feel. I’ve. Been. Castrated.”

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#9 Men Are Losing Out in the World of Work

We are seeing an emerging pattern throughout the industrial world, says Anthropologist

Lionel Tiger. “Men and women may not discern it clearly, but the pattern underlies their

experience in industrial society. It is a pattern of growth in the confidence and power of women,

and of erosion in the confidence and power of men.”

This is evident in the major shifts we are seeing in the workforce. Women are moving in and

men are moving out. Women currently make up 40 percent of the labor force in Europe and the

rest of the industrial world. During the last two decades more women have begun to work

outside the home almost everywhere in the world, while men’s participation in the labor force

has declined.

We see an even more dramatic trend in the proportion of educational degrees awarded to

women:

1970 2008

PhDs 13.3% 48.9%

MDs 8.4% 42.7%

Law 5.4% 45.9%

Dentists 0.9% 40.1%

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Men Over An Endangered Species?

#10 Men Are on Top in the Death Professions

In the 2002 Jobs Rated Almanac author Les Krantz rated the nation's ten best and ten worst

jobs. The criteria to determine the most and least appealing career opportunities include

environment, income, employment outlook, physical demands, security and stress. Each

occupation is ranked using data from such sources as the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the

U.S. Census Bureau, as well as studies conducted by a wide range of trade associations and

industry groups.

The ten best jobs include: Biologist, Actuary, Financial planner, Computer-systems analyst,

Accountant, Software engineer, Meteorologist, Paralegal assistant, Statistician, and Astronomer.

These are the kinds of jobs that women are beginning to move into in ever larger numbers.

The ten worst jobs include: Lumberjack, Commercial fisherman, Cowboy, Ironworker,

Seaman, Taxi driver, Construction worker, Farmer, Roofer, and Stevedore. Do we see a pattern

here in terms of gender? Picture people engaged in the jobs listed above. What comes to mind

—A man or a woman? Although the Monty Python comedy troupe made famous the song, "I'm

a Lumberjack and I'm O.K.," the life of professional lumberjacks couldn't be much rougher. I

live in a town where men still cut trees and work in the lumber mills. They all know someone

who has died over the years and every man I know has sustained serious injuries. Those

occupying the other professions don’t do much better. In fact, psychologist Warren Farrell calls

these jobs the “Death professions.”

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#11 Women Have Become the First Sex

In her 1999 book, The First Sex, anthropologist Helen Fisher recognizes that a total

reversal of fortunes was underway in relationships between men and women. Based on a great

deal of scientific evidence that shows that the sexes are quite different in everything from brain

function to the ways hormones influence behavior, Fisher suggests that these differences make it

likely that women will dominate in significant areas of life in the 21st century. “As women

continue to pour into the paid workforce in cultures around the world,” says Fisher, “they will

apply their natural aptitudes in many sectors of society and dramatically influence twenty-first

century business, sex, and family life. In some important parts of the economy, they will even

predominate, becoming the first sex.”

In a period where education becomes increasingly important in being able to make a

living and create a meaningful identity, males are falling by the wayside. In 2001, a record 58

percent of college graduates were women. It’s the latest peak in a 20 year trend for women, who

also graduate from high school and enroll in college at higher rates than men. According to U.S.

Department of Education projections, the diploma gap between the sexes promises to keep

widening.

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#12 Men Are Losing The Marriage Game

With male economic prospects declining and females increasing, women are less likely to

marry and have families with men who aren’t on the track for success. The education gap is

having a profound effect on marriage and family life. According to Paul Harrington of

Northeastern University’s Center for Labor Market Studies, we are now seeing a “marriage gap,”

where educated women are finding it more and more difficult to find partners that they consider

equals.

The complaint that there aren’t enough “good men” available is particularly noticeable for

college-educated African American or Hispanic women. African American men receive about

half as many college degrees as black women and Hispanic men are outpaced 60 percent to 40

percent by Hispanic women.ii What has been true for minority women for some time, is now

becoming true for mainstream women. Sylvia Ann Hewlett, author of Creating a Life says that

the more successful the woman, the more difficult it will be for her to find a mate or bear a child.

From a man’s point of view his prospects are becoming diminished. Without a good

education he can’t get a good job. Without a good job he can’t get a good woman who wants to

settle down and create a family with him. Without a family a man becomes increasingly isolated,

irritable, angry, and depressed.

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#13 Fatherhood Is On The Way Out

As women have fewer children, more are choosing to raise them without the involvement of

the father. “More women are having children without men, and therefore more men are without

the love of families, says anthropologist Lionel Tiger. “With startling new techniques,

unprecedented arrangements have been struck for insemination, conception, implantation, frozen

embryos, and surrogate mothers.

One of the leading predictors of violence in countries throughout the world is the percentage

of young men between the ages of 20 and 29 who are not married. Countries with large

percentages of young men in this age group include Iraq, Iran, Algeria, Turkey, Egypt, India,

Afghanistan, China, and Israel. We don’t have to be experts in world politics to know that these

countries are also the ones where war and violence is a constant concern. According to Edie

Weiner, president of Weiner, Edrich, Brown, Inc., a leading futurist consulting group in the

United States, “The most destabilizing geopolitical force in the world today is the vast number of

young men without jobs and other opportunities.”

The place where the large population of unmarried males is most evident is in China. Chinese

traditions, a tough one-child-per couple policy and modern medical technology have combined

to create a demographic nightmare that could pose a threat to the stability of China and is likely

to impact the rest of the world. Over the next two decades, as many as 40 million young Chinese

men won’t be able to marry, settle down and start a family.

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i David P. Barash and Judith Eve Lipton. Making Sense of Sex: How Genes and Gender Influence our Relationships. Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1997, 34. ii Ibid.

#14 Men Are Losing Out in Work and Love

Divorced or separated men are more than twice as likely to kill themselves as men who remain

married. On the other hand, a marital split is not a significant risk factor for suicide among

women. These are the findings of a recent study of suicide and divorce that reveal a surprising

gender gap on the issue. "We knew from past research that divorce was linked to increased risk

of suicide," says Augustine Kposowa, the author of the study that appeared in The Journal of

Epidemiology and Community Health. "What we didn't know was the difference between men

and women in this respect."

Kposowa believes that one of the primary reasons for divorced fathers higher suicide rate may

be that they feel so alienated from their children. "A man may not get to see his children, even

with visitation rights," Kposowa says. "As far as the man is concerned, he has lost his marriage

and lost his children and that can lead to depression and suicide."

Karl Marx said about the industrial system that people are profoundly alienated from the

means of production—jobs. If Darwin were alive today, he might comment that men were

profoundly alienated from the means of reproduction—women.iii Freud might have pointed out

that men have become alienated from both basic needs, lieben und arbeiten--To love and to

work.

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iii Reported by Tiger, 1999, p. 27.


#15 Men Are Killing Themselves in Record Numbers

There are millions of men who are depressed, but don’t know it and millions more who know

it, but are afraid to show it. It isn’t manly to be depressed. There is a double stigma for men.

We can accept physical disability, but mental disability makes us feel helpless and out of control.

Emotional problems are also seen by many of us as “feminine.” We cover our unhappiness with

drink, drugs, excessive exercise, overwork, and angry moods.

Psychotherapist Terrence Real, author of I Don’t Want to Talk About It: Overcoming the

Secret Legacy of Male Depression says: “Hidden depression drives several of the problems we

think of as typically male: physical illness, alcohol and drug abuse, domestic violence, failures

in intimacy, self-sabotage in careers.”

Estimated Annual Suicide Rate per 100,000 by Age and Gender

Age Range Men Women Male : Female

5-14 1.3 0.4 3.25

15-19 18.5 3.7 6.08

20-24 27.2 4.0 7.35

25-64 25.6 6.1 4.20

65-85 49.4 5.1 9.68 85+ 75.0 5.0 15.00

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But these trends don’t need to define our future. The old adage, popular in some feminist circles, “A woman needs a man, like a fish needs a bicycle,” might be placed in the category of

“be careful what you ask for, you might get it.” As we’ve undermined the position of men in society, we have unleashed a good deal of male despair and violence, turned inward in the form of depression and suicide and outward in the form of aggression and violence.

The truth is that women need men as much as men need women. We’ll all do better to recognize that there will be no world without men. We will either swim together or sink together. I know where I’m putting my energies. How about you?

Comments are welcome.

From The Irritable Male Syndrome: Managing The 4 Key Causes of Depression and Aggression By Jed Diamond e-mail: [email protected]

Web: www.MenAlive.com & www.TheIrritableMale.com

http://www.TheIrritableMale.com/

http://www.MenAlive.com/

mailto:[email protected]

The End of Men? 15 Reasons Males Face Extinction

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